Got a haircut the other day, not quite Semper Fi, but close. I like to think of it as the astronaut look.

Less self-centeredly, here are some photos of the skate ramp that's coming together in the backyard:

Oh wow. This is fucking amazing. You have to click on the Archive links at the right to go more than four posts back, but it looks like a year or more of solid gold.

G-D it, this is why I love the internet. Stellar knockout writing, foulmouthed and perverse, and no dang gatekeepers. Content makes me miss NYC, too.

And also, my sister has a new bit up that's really good. On another level, really.

I really enjoyed watching the Warriors/Mavericks series. Partly it's schadenfreude -- there are few things more fun that watching Mark Cuban watch his pretty-boys lose -- but I think overall it was just great basketball and a great upset story between two teems with rich subtext.

I have to say I found TBS's coverage to be pretty annoying. It's probably a function of the relative obscurity of Golden State, and the dominant popularity of Dallas, but it really seemed like the commentary and statistics dwelled excessively on the Mavs. Even in defeat, they were showing stat-shots of Nowitzki, and everyone in my household agreed we would have loved to be able to mute Marv Albert and just listen to the crowd, let alone learn a little more about the team that was actually advancing in the playoffs.

I've always been one to root for the underdog, but it occurs to me that the prevailing sentiment in much of America is the opposite. People love rooting for a winner.

Also, we've decided that when the Red Dawn comes, our militia will not be the Wolverines, but rather the Warriors.

The above image is from a French AIDS awareness campaign. I saw it somewhere and it stuck me, so I saved it for a racy mental-exhibitionism post like this. Gotta love those people and their culture

So, as I mentioned before, I'm "adrift on the seas of celibacy." It's not a bad thing, and (again) as I said I don't like to complain about it; I've had a lucky life in love, and somewhere deep down I trust that this will all work out.

What I do feel like writing about though is the psychological state/journey that I find myself in/on as a result of this moment.

There's a critical lack of desire, of fantasy. I believe intellectually that sex can be fun, but at the moment I don't seem to be living the belief that it can be fun for me. I don't know why this is, really. I haven't had some bad or souring experience, just a period -- approaching a year now -- of relative isolation, self-imposed.

The self-imposition, by the way, goes beyond my choice of where I live. As much as this place is small, the overwhelming empirical evidence shows it's not without a population of babes, and yet I do nothing. Why is this?

This feeling of "not believing in it for me" reminds me of a point a couple of years ago where I felt the same way about love generally. That was a darker point, at the nadir of a rebound. This is nowhere near as dire, but the lack of an apparent reason is frustrating. What is it that's keeping me from feeling the flutter, from fantasizing, from having some fucking fun?

I was lying awake last night trying to really follow this thought. "What is your fantasy?" I asked myself. I'm not sure right now.

Things are going good!

I had a pretty great weekend, following up on the positive momentum of the week. Friday after work I hit up my favorite dingy little workout room down at the Community Pool, then rolled back over the Humbrews to eat some good bar food, drink a couple heady beers and watch the Golden State Warriors beat up on those pretty boys from Dallas.

Shortly I was joined by Mark and Sarah for a beer, and ended up piggybacking on Sarah's evening plans and catching a ride to go out dancing down in Eureka at a place called the Pearl, which turns out to be the most urban/cosmopolitan place I've been in the HC, brushed metal interior and Tanquerey on the rail.

It was decent; a bit crowded and the soundsystem needed some more speakers, but the music (obscure hip-hop b-sides and sci-fi instrumental quasi-hyphy) was generally danceable and the crowd was good. It was very good for me to go out with people I don't hang out with every day, and then sweat and shake in the same room as some attractive women. That doesn't happen often enough.

Saturday I hung out with Sarah and Ryah (I slept on their floor) at the Farmers Market on the plaza, which is a good hippy-ass scene with kids running around and people learning to juggle and bluegrass and massive squashes and all that jazz. Got a ride home eventually with the Mark man and we made a huge bonfire in the newly cleared back yard and bro'd down for the evening.

It's been a pretty good week overall. Not without some troubles, but for the most part they are challenges which have been overcome. I'm starting to feel like I'm getting a good pace going. So, here's a step through where things are at:

Work
This has been the biggest weight on my mind lately. We're getting very close to having a truly stable business, but it's (as I've mentioned) a very two steps forward/one step back kind of affair. I've been struggling with my responsibilities. I handle a lot of the day-to-day organization and scheduling of the work that we do -- taskmaster stuff -- in addition to taking on the harder Drupal coding. I've also got more business experience than my partner, so I tend to have the skeptical/devil's advocate role in those discussions.

I'm not used to being in a position like this, and it's definitely a learning experience figuring out peer-leadership. It's good though, because that's the future.

It hasn't been helping that lately we've been under external pressures. Matt had a run-in with the muni track on his bike, and he's been laid up for the past couple weeks. Has a screw in his wrist. Luckily the man has his own health coverage; we're still about a month away from providing.

Then there was tax day, which is never fun, and at the beginning of the month we lost a big high-profile client before we managed to get started, which was a bummer. Things are picking up, but it's hard with a man down. These are a challenges I'm confident we'll overcome, but it definitely adds tension, and just as I'm coming to appreciate how important it is to keep a cool head.

Sorry for two politics posts in a row, but this one doesn't quite fit at FM, and it's too juicy to not pass along. Via the pranksters at Sadly, No! comes a real gem:

Turned off by cunninglingus? Eh, a lot of guys don’t dig that. Who the hell knows what’s going on down there. It’s like H.R. Geiger giving up ink and canvas to work in the avant-garde medium of Play-Doh and bacon.

This is a prominent (linked to by more than 2000 others) right-wing blogger, The Ace Of Spades, responding (defensively) to a list of reasons you might be gay.

I'm reminded of an overheard bit of conversation my man The Girth related to me. An older bachelor, speaking to a younger man, said, "man, I love it when I hear some young cat tell me he doesn't like to eat pussy; that's someone's girlfriend I can have."

Which is an over-statement, but contains a kernel of truth: you're not going to do very well with women socially (let alone sexually) if you've yet to overcome the feeling that a meat-eating fish inhabits the vagina of the Terrible Mother.

John Stewart brought his A-Game against McCain, who does well in this format. They maintain an affable and friendly rapport, but Stewart's responses to McCain's talking points are something every Democrat who wants to have a voice on this issue should grok. This is how it's done.

McCain starts filibustering in the second segment -- probably because he realizes that his best chance is to not let Stewart talk -- which is a little annoying. Also, Stewart could have done a better job of returning to the issue of "metrics and timetables" when McCain started talking up the "new strategy," because even if you accept the proposition that the Surge really counts as a new strategy (most honest military observers contend that a 10% increase in troop strength will have little to no impact, which is what we are a seeing) you have to wonder when and how you'll know if it's working or not.

Still, this is something every Democratic contender should study.

Well, I've been stewing, and now I'll be spewing.

We of Cinema
A while back I got this great DVD from Brazil called City of Men, something of a follow-on to the brilliant film City of God, which delves into the lives of children in a particularly infamous favela.

The series is significantly more positive than the movie. It doesn't shy away from grit or violentce, but it does manage to pull out a lot of beauty by taking a wider angle and showing the holistic culture and community. It's really fantastic. You can buy it from Amazon if you like.

One of my favorite aspects of the series is the way in which many episodes include "live" camcorder shots of/by the kids, archival footage (which may or may not be real), and also documentary-style interviews. This form represents next-gen postmodernism at it's best: a reconstructive narrative. One of the more humorous moments comes in an episode where the two protagonists take a trip to Brazillia to hand-deliver a letter to President Lula, under the auspices of an NGO who's director has the kids film things in the favela. They're riding on the bus with the camcorder, talking about how important it is to get on tape so the director can "make her gringo bosses happy."